


Higher Than A Summer's Day

by paperiuni



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Briefly Explicit Sex, Friendship/Love, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Obscure Gay Poetry Flirting, Past Dorian Pavus/Rilienus, Past Loves, Stealth Hissrad/Vasaad, Storytelling, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-17 07:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13072053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: It's a strange choice: one between curiosity and intimacy. What will it benefit Bull to ask, about this man who has Dorian wound in knots from afar? What Dorian is really asking is,help me tell you. Help him bleed this wound so it doesn't kill him.A diplomatic opportunity brings old memories to the surface, and a few long-buried tales get a telling.





	Higher Than A Summer's Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coveredinfeels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coveredinfeels/gifts).



Arched back on Bull's bed, his hair a messy black nimbus against the linen, Dorian is somewhere far away. His fingers cinch into a pillow and his cock thickens against Bull's tongue, but he's pinned between this moment and another.

Bull kisses his hip. That's always been a safe place to kiss. "Not feeling it tonight?"

Dorian huffs. "You ask that with evidence to the contrary literally in your face?"

"I know the difference between you sighing 'cause it's good and 'cause you're tetchy."

It was one of those evenings when they started in the Herald's Rest, in assorted company. Gradually they drifted to the edges of the card game. Bull lost a round when Dorian smiled at the wrong—right—moment, and they went up the stairs not one trailing the other, but together.

Between the tavern and now, the mood has dulled.

Dorian touches his face, hand curved under a horn. Bull would accept a nudge back towards his cock. He had the bones of a plan that'd let them get to Adaar's war table meeting at the morning bell looking mostly put together.

"Don't speak of me as if I were a skittish farm animal." Dorian's tone sours. "I could perhaps do with a little more _to_ do."

"You just had to say that. Spy, not actual mind reader, remember?"

"I thought your occupation listed towards tavern diplomacy and general carnage these days."

Bull concedes that with a guttural laugh. They manoeuvre around each other's weak spots; always have, though it's only lately that they can both find the humour in the practice.

Dorian slides a hand down Bull's nape, a fingertip tracing the shallow groove that then rises into the topmost vertebra. If you can strike from the back, a slash across the neck will drop anyone from dwarf to qunari. Right where Dorian's touch idles.

"In the interest of being plain: may I, pray tell, put my hands on you?"

"You already did." Bull presses down a shudder in his spine. "Rude."

"You're not bedding me for my _manners_."

Bull braces himself as Dorian drapes an arm around his neck and uses him as leverage to sit up. "No. Guess I'm not."

Dorian will kiss that invisible, vulnerable line in his skin later. That'll do as much as Dorian's hand on his cock to wrench the orgasm out of him, in a breathless glut of feeling.

*

The next day comes clear and golden, as it can only when the heart of summer is over. Sunlight falls into the war room through the stained-glass windows. Dorian stands with the shadows of the lead seams crisscrossing on his cheek as Adaar and Josephine confer, and steals a greater portion of Bull's attention than the meeting. The mission sounds standard: ride to Jader on the coast, help the local nobles close some newly exposed rifts, let Josephine reap the diplomatic benefits.

They're finishing up when Adaar says, "Wait a moment, Bull."

At the same time Josephine gestures to Dorian. "Serah Pavus, might we continue our earlier discussion?"

Dorian hasn't mentioned any chats with Josephine. The others make their exit, Dorian turns to Josephine, and Bull's hypothetical chance to eavesdrop is spoiled by Adaar, who remains leaned over the war table.

"What can I do for you, boss?"

"I have a job for your men," she says, straight to the point as is her wont. "I know Lieutenant Aclassi's still recovering—how's the leg, by the way?"

"That enchanter you brought from the Hinterlands, she had some concoction that got rid of the wound rot." Bull waves his relief aside, but is glad to see it reflected in Adaar's face. "He's fine. He'll be fine."

"Good. Since that's in the future tense, I need you to take point on this." It's a bit touching how Adaar's come to value Krem.

"Glad I still rate as your second choice to lead my own company," he says, wry.

She raises a scarred brow. "My first choice for you would be to go with me. Especially since I'm taking Dorian."

"Josie's not stealing him away for some bit of 'Vint relations?" To the side, Dorian's bent towards Josephine, his hands clasped behind his back. They've switched to quiet tones and High Tevene, so Bull could make out every other word at best. Even if he wasn't having an unrelated conversation with his employer.

"Yeah, she is," Adaar says. "I can also use his help with slicing demons in tiny pieces. Two fish with one spear."

Bull nods and lets her launch into an explanation of the job she wants the Chargers on. He's thankful to let the planning take over his mind from trying to see Dorian's expression.

*

Dorian vanishes with nary an excuse, a sheaf of papers from Josephine under his arm, while Bull's huddled with Adaar. For the rest of the day, Bull sorts through preparations for departure to West Hill.

For the next two days, he hardly sees Dorian. Bull catches him in fervent argument with Vivienne in the upper bailey, or heckling the quartermaster for a new dagger to replace the one he bent on a red templar's suit of plate, or on the other side of the great hall at meal times. Then someone or something else needs Bull's attention, and Dorian slips away, clinging to Bull's thoughts until more urgent concerns intrude.

The evening bell has rung on the third day when Bull climbs the stairs of the rotunda. A hooded elf slips down from the rookery and passes him without a glance, going from shadow to shadow in the dusky library. A chill moves in the air, a suggestion of an open window.

Dorian sits in his high-backed chair with his feet up on the seat, holding a densely filled sheet of vellum. The copper reading lantern on his table holds candles dissolving into a mass of tallow. If he had a spell wisp for light, it's faded.

"Bull," he says. The vellum page disappears into an obscure fold of his attire. "I didn't hear you come up."

Bull's brace is not muffled, and he knocked the toe of his boot on a step coming up. "You didn't show for supper. Had to make sure you hadn't starved over some arcane mystery."

"Is it—it is that late, isn't it?" Dorian clicks his fingers to conjure up a wisp; it barely lifts the shadows under his eyes. "If I go to the tavern, Bea might take pity on me."

"She might, but she's got the night off." The shelf behind Dorian's chair creaks as Bull leans on it a little too hard. "I'm in good with Frances in the kitchens, though."

"Oh? I thought she'd been merrily married for twelve years. For love, or so every castle gossip has it."

"Am I standing here telling you there's other ways into somebody's good graces? Really?"

"No." Dorian rubs the spot between his eyebrows. "If you wish to get into mine, supper might be a start."

Deciding not to comment on the perversity of that remark when it was Dorian who assumed, Bull prods his chair with his foot. "Come on."

With temerity, Dorian lights their way with the spell wisp. Many of the castle folk balk the sight of any mage _doing_ magic, but common opinion doesn't seem to rank high on Dorian's list of concerns tonight. They leave the kitchen with a skin of mild mead, a loaf of bread and some smoked fish. Frances tucks a tiny crock of butter on top of their bundle.

"The forge loft?" Bull cuts off the question of whose room they'll take before it's even asked. "The Seeker and I have a table there."

"For what purpose, dare I ask?"

"Hard spirits and no conversation." Bull leads Dorian and his wisp towards the door.

*

The heat of the dimmed forge lingers under the rafters. Cassandra's door is shut, so she's away, and they have the space to themselves. The table's rickety and one of the chairs actually a barrel with a splintered plank, but Dorian perches on the latter with poise.

A row of fat candles and a few tin cups clutter one corner of the table. They eat with their knives and fingers in relative silence. Dorian fetches a ladleful of water from the smiths' barrels for them to wash their hands before and after. Tomorrow, they'll go their ways.

It's not new. The Inquisition ascends with breathless speed, building on foundations that haven't settled yet. However strong a front they present, the scramble for resources never ends. Whoever can do a job is sent out for it.

At the meeting, Adaar damn near apologised for splitting Bull from Dorian for a few weeks.

"I could swallow every last drop of this and not go beyond 'pleasantly hummy'." Dorian lifts the sloshing mead skin. "We must compensate with some light chatting."

"Right." Bull takes the skin from him to refill his own cup. "Krem's fever is down. Dalish is chatting up that new dwarf alchemist and Skinner's sulking over that, though I figure Dalish just owes Rocky a favour and is trying to get him an in with her. They better sort it out before we leave."

"And?" A coaxing hand motion.

"That's about it."

"You can talk about the charming antics of your company for at least a quarter-hour at any given time. That was the shortest report I've ever heard from you."

"You just like making faces at the gory details," Bull says mellowly, though it's only the truth. "What's up with you?"

"Preparations." Dorian frowns at the spell wisp shining on top of an unlit candle. It pulses once and shines brighter. "Just when I was getting somewhere with my translation. It's not as if experts in Eastern Ancient Tevene grow on trees like oranges."

"Ask the boss to take somebody else." Now Bull's pretending he missed Josephine taking Dorian aside.

He misses little about Dorian. Some of it is the old watcher instinct, impossible to smother even now that his loyalties are only to the Inquisition. The rest is—curiosity, of a kind, and intimacy, of the kind that grows when circumstances push you together, and you decide to go with them rather than against them.

"I can't." Dorian flicks a breadcrumb off the table. Constant twitches of movement. "The lady ambassador has an opportunity. Someone from the Vyrantium Circle of Magi wrote to her—by furtive means. There isn't political benefit in this, but we face magical phenomena the world's never seen before. If we could access the learning of even a single Tevinter Circle..."

"What are they offering? Books or scholars?" Bull sharpens. "Or Venatori sympathisers trying to get at Inquisition research?"

"It'd be a rather amateurish way to infiltrate."

"So you think it's genuine." Bull can get the details on the offer from other sources. There's bound to be some form of ample recompensation from the Inquisition—getting people _or_ materials over the border on the sly is doable but never easy. That's all technical, though, and doesn't explain Dorian's demeanour. "What's the grit in this grindstone?" 

"I think it's genuine because I know the man who wrote the letter. He's a senior enchanter at a branch college of the Vyrantium Circle, in a town of little significance."

"That's the important bit, huh?"

"Actually, it is. It's the sort of place where you bury a gifted scholar when his death would be impolitic but so are his sentiments. Such as a wish not to watch the world be torn apart."

Somewhere in his telling, Dorian stopped fidgeting. His hands are splayed on his thighs, his calves askew, feet canted in. He flattens his soles to the floor.

Bull knows Dorian remembers the question he hasn't yet answered, so he doesn't repeat it.

"He wrote to me." Things move in the dark of Dorian's eyes. "I have to go meet him."

"Sounds like it." Only a highborn mage could hold a senior rank in a Tevinter Circle, never mind how out-of-the-way. For an altus to visit as far south as Jader, the stakes of the journey must be respectably lofty.

In this tarry moment like a beat of some immense heart, Bull should let Dorian go. More often than not, Dorian would steal unsubtly into his room on a night before a departure. For a proper leavetaking, as he once put it, airy as seafoam.

They don't meet in the mornings when one of them is going. They part in the night, muttering goodbyes and, at times on Dorian's part, half-cheeky _Andraste keep you_ s. They might exchange a last kiss, slow and sleepy, before Dorian slips out.

"There's more," Dorian starts, then stops.

"Listen," Bull says, knowingly dry. "I helped kill those Venatori you knew. You were on the Storm Coast with me. I know how you look first thing in the morning." He pauses, not for weight but lightness. "I'm pretty sure our friendship can take it if you used to fuck this guy, or whatever's got you—"

" _Fuck_ him?" Dorian bursts out. "Andraste at the stake. I—"

So much for levity to ease the tension. The spell wisp gutters; Bull should learn to light some candles if Dorian's liable to be distracted.

"What is it?" he counters, willing himself to focus. Assumption doesn't seem to work that well for either of them.

"Yes, I fucked him." Dorian throws up his hands. "He taught in the Minrathous Circle when I was staying with Gereon and Felix." No _Livia_. Dorian means the unhappy later phase of living with the Alexius family.

Rising slowly, Bull gets his flint and steel. Dorian struggles over his own pause to further words, hushed and halting.

"I wasn't certain I wanted to tell you."

"I keep your secrets, 'Vint." The wisp shimmers enough to outline the candles, and Bull strikes a spark to a rushstalk to light them with it. "Or you can keep 'em."

"Maker's arse. Stop turning like a weathervane. Ask me or do not, Bull."

It's a strange choice: one between curiosity and intimacy. What will it benefit Bull to ask, about this man who has Dorian wound in knots from afar? What will it _cost_?

What Dorian is really asking is, _help me tell you_. Help him bleed this wound so it doesn't kill him.

He moves his chair so he's sitting across the table corner from Dorian, leaving him an open route to the stairs. Walling somebody in will bring their walls up in turn. Then, as gently as he can before it turns pitying, "Tell me."

"Josephine brought me the letter a week ago. She wanted to give me a few days to think it over." Dorian stands. Sooner or later he always has to pace, his mind too full to let his body rest. "Sometimes I dread to think how much you two have in common. She gave me time. On account of this particular message."

"I'm flattered. I guess."

"Not that the practical implications don't merit reflection. He's offering our scribes covert access to Circle writings pertaining to the Veil. Demonology, metaphysics, oneirology. All would be valuable." For a moment Dorian lets the current of esoteric terminology carry him, but the possibilities don't ignite him like Bull would expect. His hands fall. He stills.

"I'm sorry. I can't begin here."

"If I get lost, you can draw me a diagram."

That pulls a ragged chuckle from Dorian. "I wonder if I could draw you a map to another life. That's what it feels like."

"There's a thing I used to tell a friend." The memory is sharp at the back of Bull's head. "Go from where it starts for you. I put pieces together for a living, even if I don't know what the shit oneirology is."

Dorian doesn't edify him on the spot, which says something about his state of mind. Instead he leans forward, one hand loose-fingered on the table.

"A few months after Livia died, I went to a rather dismal party. It was, oh, Magister Orfidia or some such well-heeled bore. But if no one put their head outside the Alexius estate and hollered, they might've simply forgotten anyone was alive in there. So I went.

"Not much happened. Orfidia's son was stabbed during the second dance, but not lethally. She defenestrated the assassin rather spectacularly." Dorian taps his fingers to some rhythm of his reminiscence. "Most of the crowd went to the window, and I—I saw a man lingering across the room. Like he didn't care to pretend to the careless fascination you were supposed to have."

"You lot avoid being straightforward like one frank word could bring down the Imperium," Bull says. "Hey, might be worth a try."

Dorian grants him a softer look than the jest deserves. "He wasn't remarkable. Tall enough to be gangly. Curly hair, barely oiled. Northwestern stock, I thought. I had no mind for blood and brain matter on flagstones, so I drifted over.

"The first thing he said to me was, 'You look like someone might cut their finger off for you.' "

Bull lets his laugh be expelled as a loud exhalation. "I want you to know I'm taking this as you tell it."

"I will try to appreciate your restraint," Dorian says, slightly barbed. "It's from a poem, _The Lovers of the Red Tower_. The comparison is meant to flatter, grisly as it is. Which I didn't know at the time. I balked, understandably, but he navigated my offence. He had a good voice. The voice of a reader. You wanted to know what would happen next.

"We stole a carafe of wine from the table and talked on the balcony. For hours. He must have recited to me half of that poem—it's a popular tale, in its more commonly known form. A laetan retainer, Efrain, falls in love with the daughter of his master. Falera forsakes the teachings of her father and they run away together, only to be discovered in the sordid act of striving for personal happiness."

"This is now how many stories within a story?" Despite himself Bull is a little enthralled. He knows Dorian well, in the ways Dorian allows. In battle they act in hard-gained unison, to the point where Adaar's rue over separating them also had to do with losing their fluid teamwork. This side of Dorian, laid bare in both his pauses and his phrases, is new.

"This matters. In any case, in the popular version, Efrain perishes, and Falera returns to her family and goes on to meekly marry whatever supercilious suitor they choose. I always thought it to be an intolerable heap of tripe." The next pause is thicker than the others.

"That night he told me a different story, from an earlier Age. In their escape, the retainer is injured on the weapon hand. The young heir throws herself at her father to let her lover flee, sacrificing her life."

When Dorian tarries, Bull nudges his hand. "So, she dies instead of him."

"Yes and no. It's Falera who dies, but there is no _he_ here. Bitter with grief, the retainer severs her own traitorous finger that kept her from defending her beloved. Thus—I was being tested."

"He wanted to know if you recognised the early version."

Somewhere over the centuries, someone might've pasted a more acceptable ending on a stubbornly enduring tale. One of the two women became a man, and the nature of the sacrifice was tugged into line with prevailing morality. Bull would be curious, but the look on Dorian's face says he can't hope to rush him. He doesn't think he wants to.

"'Harsh was love as the heart of winter, higher than a summer's day'." Dorian wets his lips. His hand finds a cup and he empties it without discretion.

"I've heard that." Bull hears his tone hushed by wonderment. "It's not Tevinter."

"The original is. It was traced through Nevarran copies, after the Tevinter versions went up in the smoke of some bonfire of deviations." Dorian pauses. "Her name was Efiria, not Efrain. Or that's the most accepted spelling."

Bull lets the incoming question wax and wane as if to make sure he's committed to voicing it. Dorian's hauled all this up from a dark well. Bull won't hurt for things to think about, on the road. He might still need one more piece.

"And his?"

"Rilienus," Dorian says. There's longing there, salt-bitter and summer-sweet. "I drank from the carafe, he from my cup. I threw his at a passerby when he stared at us."

"Did you at least hit him?"

"Oh yes." Dorian sounds proud. "The passerby, that is."

*

A silence then.

Bull knows that what Dorian has let run is heart-blood, a willing rush of it into Bull's open hands. Dorian's had this under his skin for a week: the ambiguous promise of a reunion with somebody who mattered deeply, once upon a time.

He watches a stream of tallow break over the top of a candle and dribble down. There are a thousand things piled on the edges of this conversation. Some of them court sense— _Can you still trust him? Did you ever? What's he not telling you?_ Others are soft as cobweb, clinging to the moment in unseen wisps.

Unbeckoned, a memory comes to Bull: a hot day on Seheron, during the months when the 'Vints would sidle back to the mainland and the cauldron of the island bubbled that much less. Vasaad with his long knives and too-fancy braids, laughing and gritty with the sand of the beach where they'd gone to spar.

He—Hissrad, then—fumbled a dodge and fell into the surf. A knife tip grazed his throat before he could rise. Copper and salt, filling the air, filling his lungs, the strong warm curve of his friend's body above him.

 _I surrender_ , he thought, up at Vasaad's unabashed grin, the unmarred skin of his neck.

He hasn't thought of that afternoon in years. The pain has gone dormant, sunken under the sharp joy of that defeat.

"All out of questions?" Dorian says, a touch hoarse.

"Uh, not as such. Wandered a bit. While you were—" Bull makes a gesture in the general direction of Dorian's head.

"Deliberating. Yes." Dorian mirrors his movement, his hand hesitant, and tugs gently on Bull's fingertips. With a small sting of surprise, Bull lets him pull his hand onto the table. "I think you deserve the rest, too."

"I'd say I'm pretty handy at reading between the lines," Bull says, "but I also said I'd listen to you."

"Such a dreadful chore, is it?"

"I can think of worse things." He stops himself before he begins a list. Dorian's hand covers his own.

"There's a great deal," Dorian says. "Some of it hazed by time and drink, which is merciful at this point. Most of it never would've happened if things hadn't been so dire with Gereon. I felt like a swimmer in a tunnel, seeing the surface just before your breath gives out."

Hope is a vicious kick when you're deep enough. Bull knows the exact shape of what Dorian means even without knowing the exact cause.

"But out of all the delightful lunacy I've partaken in, I never had it in me to regret him."

 _You loved him._ That's clear as a rain-rinsed sky. The usual tone Dorian takes when he talks about his past trysts is a guarded one: sometimes it veers into irony, sometimes into rancour or even honest approval. Now his voice is soft and curiously raw.

"Good." Bull feels fresh anger clot his throat through the bemused sympathy. It makes no difference to him who this man is, with his enigmatic offer of assistance, but he's someone to Dorian. Was even more of a someone, before Tevinter happened to them. That much Bull can deduce.

"I—" Dorian's grip tightens. He's looking intently at their joined hands. "I have to go. The repercussions might not be great even if we did pass this opportunity by, but... there are some things I never had the chance to say. You know."

"I know." Bull stares down at the same spot. "I know."

Maybe it bears repeating. If Bull could have one more chance to see Vasaad—to see Gatt, Rashok, Kitra, any of the dozens whose bones lie scattered on Seheron—well, he knows what the priests would say. The fallen need nothing from the living. The lost are a millstone that will drag you down unless you cut it loose. Best to do it clean as cutting a throat.

Which is a weird metaphor, considering how many necks Bull has chopped through, and it's never neat.

"I will return." Dorian's words seem to come out of nowhere. Bull realises he's turned his hand, or maybe Dorian did, but their fingers lie untidily enfolded.

"Were you planning on fucking off?" He tries to pivot it into a joke.

"Don't be absurd." Dorian gives a scoff, but it falters in the middle. "It'll be a month. We've weathered that before."

Neither of them looks up; Bull shuts his eye and allows himself to feel the quiet heat of Dorian's hand against his own.

The dead don't give second chances. But if Bull had one, he'd take it, if only to make a better parting, to grasp arms and touch brows for a final time, maybe to say something before they left on that last mission. He couldn't fit in Hissrad's skin anymore, would not be somebody to whom Vasaad would give his sun-sharp smirk. They are both gone, and so is that life. The same as Dorian's years in Tevinter.

This, though, is the gift: in the shifting space in his heart where Vasaad once was, somebody else can fit now, and carve it into his own shape.

"When you get back," Bull says to Dorian, "I should tell you a story."

*

A week into Kingsway, Bull pushes his way through a celebratory crowd in front of the Herald's Rest. The Inquisitor's returned with new allies, whose delegates and their retinues clog the lower bailey and spread into camps beyond the causeway.

Some elbows and excuses later he makes it to the bar. Bea whirls to meet him. "A pint of millet, yes? Hold on to your horns just a blink."

"They're a permanent fixture," Bull tells her, and she laughs as she whirls away again.

The ground floor is crammed. In a corner of the upper floor, Bull spots Dorian, his hands lively with the flow of some narrative that drowns in the background chatter. An earthenware jug sits on the table, its beak stained with a rivulet of red wine.

A man sits across from Dorian, in turn, in travel attire whose cut and flair still hint at the Imperium. His laugh breaks into the air at something Dorian says. He's too tall for his chair, to a lesser extreme than the one Bull knows on a daily basis, with a hawkish nose and the dark, clear eyes of a scholar.

Not Dorian's type at all, Bull finds himself thinking. Other than maybe the height.

Dorian looks up, sees Bull, and turns a quarter in his chair. The smile on his face softens, and Bull feels it like a finger stroked over his own mouth. He holds still as Dorian rises. Somebody jostles him, but their apology pours past him.

"You're back," he manages when Dorian is finally within proper hearing distance, close enough to touch.

"That I am." The smile is still there. Dorian's eyes shine with it. "I would like you to meet someone."

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand blessings upon Jared for putting up with me when I was wrestling this down. ♥


End file.
